In this thread about Answers in Genesis we haven't had any contributions from people who are on the staff of that organisation. Thois who have looked at their website have been interested to note that the language they use about those who disagree with them is fully in accord with some postings we see from time to time on a.r.c These two posts are an attempt to indicate something of what they write on creationists sites, which are not usually visited by thosde outside the creationist community. Answers in Genesis and Jonathan Sarfati: Part 1 of 2 I apologise for the length of this post and the next one. However they illustrate three significant points. (a) The excessive number of words required to adequately reply to and refute even a short creationist piece of writing; (b) The fact that creationists are usually much more vitriolic when speaking or writing to sympathetic audiences than they are in open forums where they can be challenged; (c) The fact that for some reason fundamentalist Christians seem to be much more opposed to Christians with whom they disagree than with the great bulk of non-Christians. I am not the only one to have come across this phenomenon. Ronald Numbers in "The Dilemma of Evangelical Scientists", chapter 12 in the book edited by George Marsden "Evangelism in Modern America", mentions some more cases. In his chapter on Ghandi in "Soul Survivor" Philip Yancey has written that following an article he wrote for the conservative Christian magazine "Christianity Today": "Although I have received plenty of venomous letters over the years, I was not prepared for the volume of hate mail the article generated". In the chapter on Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in the same book Yancey writes: "In my own experience, those who strive the hardest and believe the most fervently are sometimes the least attractive persons. Like the Pharisees of Jesus' day, they get caught up in competition and end up self-righteous rather than righteous. Politicians tell me their nastiest letters come from people who quote the Bible and claim to speak for God - which I can easily believe since my mailbox shows the same pattern." The main point of these two postings is to put on record my attempts to correct various errors of fact made by Jonathan Sarfati. In order to do this adequately, this posting will cover a bit of historical background, going back to some postings to a,r,c in 1998. The second posting will cover events of earlier this year (2005). My involvement with creationism goes back nearly 40 years, shortly after I took up a lecturing position in Mathematics at the University of Queensland and moved here in 1965. However until 1981 my reactions were pretty low key. Things hotted up then, and really came to the boil in 1984. I could give people an expanded account of the above happenings, and will probably prepare one for submission to some archive somewhere, but they are not immediately relevant to this particular post. In November 1998 Darren Middleton posted a short item to a.r.c asking if I was the person named in an issue of "Prayer News" from the Creation Science Foundation. I kept a copy of Darren's post (stripped of most of the header lines) and last weekend I came across it on a floppy disk with some other items from a.r.c G'day Ken, Are you the One Dr Ken Smith who is a fellow of ISCAST, and has the dubious honour of being joint sceptic of the year in 1986 for a book co-edited attacking biblical creation & biblical inerrancy? Emmmmmmmmm.... What did you think of Sarfati's article? Any comments? Regards Darren Middleton Who wishes he could win believer of the year - Revelation over Reason....;-) I responded to Darren, saying that I hadn't seen the whole thing, but that someone has sent me some extracts from it. "Darren R Middleton" <> writes: G'day Ken, Are you the One Dr Ken Smith who is a fellow of ISCAST, and has the dubious honour of being joint sceptic of the year in 1986 for a book co-edited attacking biblical creation & biblical inerrancy? Yes, I suspect that I am the person referred to. However you should take the description of the book with a large number of grains of salt. It is unwise to rely on things printed by Answers in Genesis unless you have independent verification of any claims. The book was "Creationism: An Australian Perspective", and was edited by Martin Bridgstock (of Griffith University) and me. It's now out of print, and neither the editors nor the authors of individual parts can raise the enthusiasm for the major rewrite which would be required - the last edition was printed in 1987, and most of the areas of science which were included have seen major progress since then. We gathered assorted scientists to write bits about different aspects of creationism. There is only one article on biblical interpretation in the whole book. Emmmmmmmmm.... What did you think of Sarfati's article? Any comments? I haven't seen Sarfati's article - not unusual, as far as I know AiG don't check with any independent person about accuracy. Someone sent me a brief extract from it as follows: [extract deleted] If anyone reading this has a copy of that issue of "Prayer News" and would like to send me a photocopy of the article, at the address in the attached .signature I would be most grateful. Regards Darren Middleton Who wishes he could win believer of the year - Revelation over Reason....;-) Ken Smith Rod Jackson was one of those who responded in the thread "One Dr Ken Smith" and he provided me with a photocopy of the article. The whole article is now available for anyone to read on the Answers in Genesis site as http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/3906.asp I suggest that if anyone wants further confirmation that AiG get much more uptight over Christians who point out errors in their misuse and misquotation of science than they do over non-Christians, you need look no further than this item. It attacks the Institute for the Study of Christianity in an Age of Science and Technology (ISCAST) mainly: see http://www.iscast.org for further information on ISCAST and various papers Fellows have written. It also attacks assorted other Christian groups and organisations. Now whatever you might think about the Anglican Diocese of Sydney and Archbishop Philip Jensen, the last charge anyone could bring against them is that they are not a very conservative group. Not so in the eyes of AiG. In 1997 Jensen was Principal of Moore College, the Anglican theological training college in Sydney. Iscast held a conference there, and this is sufficient, in the eyes of AiG, to condemn Moore College and Philip Jensen. Apparently even giving a welcome address to delegates to the conference is sufficient to condemn Dr (now Archbishop) Jensen. But it didn't stop there. The Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (formerly known as IVF, the InterVarsity Fellowship) is also condemned. As is Ridley College in Melbourne, the Teachers Christian Fellowship, Scripture Union (which coordinates chaplaincy work in State Schools in Queensland), and the Christian Medical and Dental Fellowship. I should, however, point out that Sarfati has shown his abysmal ignorance of conservative Christian groups in Australia. These organisations are listed under the heading "ISCAST's penetration of Australian evangelicalism". We all know that creationists are ignorant of the history of their own movement, but if they continue to rely on Sarfati for information they will, in future, be even more ignorant of the history of other Christian groups. I don't know whether Sarfati was told something about Australian religious history when he migrated from NZ, but someone should inform him that all these organisations were around, and flourishing, long before ISCAST was formed. And their views haven't changed significantly over the years. I had tried earlier, either alone or jointly with other Christian scientists, to get AiG to correct errors, without success. When I read the article in "Prayer News" I decided that it wasn't worth even trying to get them to correct some of the more obvious errors. Dr Allan Day, a Fellow of Iscast who was also attacked, replied, and you can read his reply, interspersed with comments by Sarfati, on http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4000.asp Anyone who reads this will immediately appreciate why scientists are not particularly interested in even trying to get creationists to correct the more obvious errors they make. However, some of the phraseology of both these items on the AiG site keeps cropping up in other places. It seems that using "cut and paste" is as prevalent in AiG as it is among assignments school children write. I did, however, in the post above where I asked for a copy of the article respond to some of Sarfati's errors. Apparently AiG doesn't read a.r.c - not that I would expect them to read anything which might challenge their ideas - or there is a slight possibility that they might have corrected some of the worst errors. The book did attack creationism, but not biblical creation. It attacked that version of creationism which emerged from Seventh-day Adventism, and was popularised by Henry M. Morris. I don't know what Sarfati is referring to when he claims I have "personally endorsed the ardent atheists Dawkins and Plimer." I wrote a review of Plimer's book for "T.E.M.P.O.", a publication circulated among Baptist ministers and other interested people in Queensland. If this is "endorsing" Plimer's atheism then I can only say that Sarfati seems to be using his very own dialect of English. I have mentioned in various places that Dawkins, in a chapter in "Climbing Mount Improbable", points out creationists' misquotation of what Darwin wrote about the eye, and provides evidence of evolution. If this is endorsing Dawkins' religious beliefs, then again Sarfati is using English in a very peculiar way. I keep having to point out to people that the Australian Skeptics is *not* an "anti-Christian organisation". This has no effect on the people at AiG, who, once they get an idea in there minds, repeat it ad nauseum, however many times their error is pointed out to them. You can check for yourself at the Australian Skeptics Web site: http://www.skeptics.com.au/ Now moving forward to 2002, there was a thread "creationism" which started sometime before August 2002. It mutated into "faith (was creationism)" and the earliest record I have of this was a posting by Gladys Swager on 26 Sep 2002. Both these threads continued for some time - a long time, in fact. A post by Gladys concluded with Lines: 29 [lines deleted] If you leave God out of the equation then there will be a diffeerent result to that when God is included in the equation. "The real reason for rejecting the creation explanation is the commitment to natualism.....evolutionists have turned science into a materialistic "game' and creation/design is excluded by their self-serving rules." Jonathan Sarfati Ph.D in 'Refuting Evolution' - published by Answers in Genesis. I'll sign off for the weekend. Gladys Among those who responded to this post was Chris Ho-Stuart. His post was long, so I'll truncate it to the part referring to Sarfati. Lines: 171 [deletions] "The real reason for rejecting the creation explanation is the commitment to natualism.....evolutionists have turned science into a materialistic "game' and creation/design is excluded by their self-serving rules." Jonathan Sarfati Ph.D in 'Refuting Evolution' - published by Answers in Genesis. Sarfati is an idiot, and he is telling you lies. In my opinion the church would be wise to be much more pro-active in countering this nonsense, and in helping Christians appreciate that the study of natural processes is NOT the same thing as a rejection or exclusion of God. But that is their choice. If the church is not able to make this clear, they will continue to lose members who recognize the force of the empirical evidence for the long history of development for the universe, the earth and life. People like Sarfati and Gladys are effectively aligned with strictly materialistic atheists like Richard Dawkins; they all argue that the natural processes of development are an ALTERNATIVE TO and in CONFLICT WITH the notion of God's involvement. They are stuck in nonsensical pre-medieval view of the world. I'll sign off for the weekend. Gladys Cheers -- Chris Whether they like it or not, creationists and atheists are on common ground here, as Chris points out. Other people responded making the same point. I responded a bit later. I'll leave my post as it originally was. Lines: 70 (Gladys Swager) writes: In <> kgs@maths.uq.edu.au (Ken Smith) writes: I've been meaning to write something about Humphreys and his very peculiar ideas about the initial state of the universe. I'll dig out his book [Starlight and time] and have another read of it. Sorry, Gladys, I don't know what you mean by "a bias towards evolution". My area of speciality is mathematics as applied to the world around us. The only thing specifically related to evolution that I have been involved in is the tough mathematical problem of determining the topology of a tree given the distances between the end nodes. It so happens that this particular bit of mathematics can be - and has been - applied to determining phylogenetic trees from data on analysis of proteins or DNA. Does this make this branch of graph theory part of evolution? I have also used electromagnetism to argue against changes in the speed of light. Is electromagnetic theory (the title of one book I have) also part of evolution? If so, you'd better let Answers in Genesis in USA know that they are using evolution, as shown by the hundreds of stations which broadcast their ideas, to propagate creationism. Or are you using "evolution" to describe anything outside creationist beliefs? The Universe could not start from nothing - all by itself. Living organisms could not create themselves and then go on to procreate others like themselves and change into other organisms. The Bible tells of an Almighty God who created by the POWER OF HIS WORD. God said and it was so. These are assertions, Gladys, not demonstrations. If you leave God out of the equation then there will be a diffeerent result to that when God is included in the equation. "The real reason for rejecting the creation explanation is the commitment to natualism.....evolutionists have turned science into a materialistic "game' and creation/design is excluded by their self-serving rules." Jonathan Sarfati Ph.D in 'Refuting Evolution' - published by Answers in Genesis. After some of the things Sarfati has written abusing me, my wife and some of my friends I have great difficulty in accepting any criticisms he might make. I'll sign off for the weekend. Gladys Salaam Ken Smith The abuse I mentioned here is covered in Part 2 of this post. But it goes to show that people simply don't trust creationists as reliable witnesses to *anything*. And once they have been found to be unreliable in matters of public knowledge, as Augustine said around 1600 years ago, why should an unbeliever place any reliance on what they say about Christianity? This post has grown so long that I think I'd better break it in half at about this point, and take up events of this year in a second post. I'll post these several hours apart, so that they should appear from your service provider in the right order. And I hope that I can manage to edit both posts to make sure any internal references are to the correct post. Salaam Ken Smith -- Dr Ken Smith - Christian, husband, unpaid mathematician, skeptic, ... `They [creationists] attempt to force a choice between two ideas that are not mutually exclusive, as though evidence that does not support one idea (evolution) thereby proves the other (creation).' Robert W. Hanson
top of page